As The Poets Affirm (As The Poets Affirm) was born out of a group of independent musicians in 2001 in Ottawa, Canada. What started as a three-piece acoustic project, eventually turned into an eclectic seven-member lineup experimenting with jazz, classical and electronica. Their name is taken from a line in Dante’s Inferno.

The band’s 2004 album The Jaws that Bite, The Claws that Catch reached the top five in !earshot, Canada’s national campus radio chart, in February of 2005. The band has also received airplay on CBC Radio 3 and Brave New Waves.